Datamaskinell kreativitet, 2023

Given by Björn Gambäck.

Computational Creativity has been claimed to be the Final Frontier of Artificial Intelligence, and aims to answer questions such as:

• How can we make computers that are creative themselves?
• How can computers understand if something is creative?
• How can computers support people in creative processes?
• How do we evaluate (computational) creativity?

The course will look at both what creativity is in general (in nature, in humans, and in computers), and specific issues related to computational creativity in fields such as language, art and music — and combinations of those fields (e.g., how a computer can compose a piece of music matching a painting or how it can produce an artefact reflecting the main content of a text).

The course consists of a set of regular lectures and student presentations.

The course will not assume any particular background knowledge of the field, but will be most relevant for students writing a Master's Thesis in Computational Creativity or a related field, or have a specific interest in creativity.
All students are thus welcome to follow the course, but should contact the lecturer beforehand.

Course Material

The course material (lecture recordings and slides, articles, etc.) will be published in the course Teams group.

The main study material (pensum) for the course are the slides, articles and presentations.
However, several of the articles are also discussed in the book The Artist in the Machine: The World of AI-powered Creativity by Arthur I. Miller (MIT Press 2019), which thus definitely is worth checking out for those who can buy it or get access to it.
For an interview with Miller about his book and computational creativity, you can listen to "The Creative Penn" podcast.

Examination

The grading will be based on the oral student presentations and a written report on the same subject, with presentation/report themes selected by the students together with the lecturer.

Course Schedule

The course will start in week 35, on Tuesday 29.8 at 14:15-16:00 in the AI-lab, which is on the 3rd floor of IT-bygget (Map).

The lectures thereafter will be on Thursday 31.8 (09:15-11), Tuesday 19.9 (14:15-16) and Thursday 21.9 (09:15-11), all of them also in the AI-lab.

The student presentations (examination) will be scheduled at different time slots during weeks 40 and 48 (tentatively 4.10 and 6.10 resp 29.11-1.12), in room 454, on the 4th floor of IT-bygget (Map).

The lectures and presentations will be onsite, but possibly available to follow also online and/or recorded.

Preliminary schedule:

1. Tuesday August 29, 14:15-16:00, AI-lab: Lecture 1, Introduction
2. Thursday August 31, 09:15-11:00, AI-lab: Lecture 2, Evaluating Creativity and Computational Linguistic Creativity
3. Tuesday September 19, 14:15-16:00, AI-lab: Lecture 3, Poetry, Humour, Evaluation and User Studies
4. Thursday September 21, 09:15-11:00, AI-lab: Lecture 4, Evaluation Techniques, Computational Music and Art
5. Wednesday October 4, 10:15-12:00, room 454: Student thesis topic presentations
6. Friday October 6, 10:15-12:00, room 454: Student thesis topic presentations
7. Thursday November 30, 10:15-12:00 OR 13:15-15, room 454: Student TDT12 project presentations

Visiting hour

by appointment

For more information about the course, please contact Prof. Björn Gambäck.